


There is a light that never goes out

by cicak



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Sweet, Wedding Fluff, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2057127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wedding of Harry Manders and Violet Mannering was to be the society event of the season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There is a light that never goes out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cambusmore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cambusmore/gifts).



> A present, on the occasion of the lovely Cambusmore's wedding.

Fortune favours the bold, however, despite the fact I thought that I was fairly strong in that account, my fortunes were never the strongest, and I was never particularly loved by the gods of luck in my life. I lost my family young, lost my fortune when I was old enough to know better, and lost my heart twice, my freedom once and the use of my leg forever as a result of chasing after the greatest man I had ever had the chance to know.

Despite this, I still figured that the universe saw that I was cursed with ill fortune and gave me Raffles to compensate.

 

Raffles had been dead for three years now. I sometimes woke and went over our last moments, as I lay bleeding into the South African veldt and he gave me that final smile with shining eyes and spoke his last words. No matter how much I waited, that memory never faded. I still sometimes thought I could reach out and touch him, when I woke shaking from the dreams.

 

The three years had been infinitely kinder to me. I had become something of a cause celebre, the toast of the scandalous scene, but not for my sparkling personality or dashing good looks, but for my books. For after Raffles was taken from me, I gave him to the world. I wrote our stories, the Doctor Watson to his Sherlock Holmes in more ways than one. I rehabilitated his memory, nursed him back to greatness and reminded the empire of its great cricketer and unknown romantic figure.

 

I would sometimes visit the scenes of our crimes to remind me of the finer details and always marvelled at how I managed to get out of such tight scrapes. I visited the cup of St Agnes and gazed lovingly at its enamelling and admired with sadness its new home within a glass case. I had hoped that her majesty would have put it upon her mantlepiece, but it was at least a better home for it than the biscuit tin. Sometimes at odd times I could still taste those biscuits, as for a month hence I ate them at every meal and dipped them into every drink until my trousers were beginning to strain. As a result, Raffles made me walk distances where a Hackney carriage would be far more comfortable, and run far further to ensure of not being followed. My figure returned, for which I was glad. It was an investment I would never be able to repeat if it happened again.

 

Somehow, as I relived his glory, I ended up gaining some of Raffles’ charm by association. Which ultimately was how I met and somehow managed to court the beautiful Miss Violet Mannering.

 

* * *

 

Ours was to be a spring wedding, with gardenias scenting the air and my bride was to wear white, the cut in the height of fashion, she assured me. Gardenias were very favourable in the language of flowers. My suggestion of yellow flowers, which was a colour that always lit up my beloved’s face, was faced with laughter at my ignorance. So instead our wedding was to be accented with white. I tried not to associate it with the shroud I had been dragged from, and the countless of others I had seen before I had been repatriated.

 

I decided to decline a new suit, and instead opted to wear my favourite one from the days when money was free flowing and I had a need for multiple suits for such an occasion. The current fashions were cut just too slim in the leg for me to be able to cope with these days. However, I bought a new cane for the wedding, and after consulting with the flower translation guide, chose to have it etched with a subtle pattern of hydrangeas, for understanding, with an ivory topper. It was very fetching, if I had to profess vanity.

 

 

* * *

 

I was sitting with Violet and her mother at the breakfast table a week before the wedding when a letter arrived addressed to me with a South African postmark. My heart skipped a beat, even though I knew that it was impossible for it to have anything within it that would give me happiness. I slit it open with the butter knife and found it to be in the unfamiliar hand of a man who called himself my Cousin Alfred, who had seen the announcement of my wedding in the Times and hoped to wrangle himself a invite, as he was in London on the announced date, and I should have someone from the family there, being that we Manders’ were a dying breed.

 

He left his hotel address as the Metropole, and after clearing the seating plans and administrative burden with my future mother in law, scrawled a reply and put it my pocket to go in the afternoon post.

 

The wedding was to be in St Marks in Regents Park, near to my house in St John’s Wood. The church had a splendid choir and an understanding rector and when I attended the Sunday service before the wedding, my betrothed and I sat in what I hoped would become the Manders family pew in the future. The reverend spoke of the completeness of forgiveness and the redemption that Christ gave all sinners, and I hoped in my heart that God would not be offended by my only half-hearted repentance for my crimes, and see to forgive me despite this.

 

For all the scandal of my past, I still managed to occupy a certain place in society, and with my betrothed herself being a famed beauty, wit and from a good family, our wedding was considered to be a notable event in the spring season. Therefore, on the morning, the churchyard was packed with all the friends and notable figures we had invited. I even spied some that I had preyed upon in my previous career with Raffles fanning themselves in the warm sun before going into the church, looking well jewelled and jolly from the enjoyment of the benevolent irony of be attending the societal redemption of their former thief.

 

I myself was standing by the shrubbery having a final Sullivan when a cab pulled up, and a gentleman got out. He wore a shabby morning suit and carried a parcel under his arm. He walked straight up to me and held out the parcel.

 

“Oh no my man,” I said, juggling my cigarette from hand to hand to try and deflect taking the parcel from him, as it was very large. “The wedding presents need to go on the table in the hall”.

“This isn’t a present for the couple” the man said, roughly pushing it into my arms. “It is a present for you.” And as quick as that, he turned neatly on a heel and strode back to his waiting cab.

I heard him tell the driver to take him to ‘Piccadilly, between the Royal Academy of Arts and Sackville street’ and my heart stopped in my chest.

 

I ripped open the paper to find a box of Huntley and Palmer biscuits. A large box. Dropping to my heels, my cigarette and circumstances forgotten, I prised open the lid with my fingernails, and my hand flew to my mouth as my eyes were dazzled by the contents within.

 

I took complete leave of my senses. Putting the tin under my arm, I flagged down a passing cab. I heard the tone of the waiting wedding party turn from quizzical to baffled to anger as I sped away as far the horses could take me.

 

I was curiously calm as we turned into Piccadilly. Walking into the Albany was familiar as tying my shoelaces. I knew who to nod to, who to politely ignore, and where I needed to be.

 

I climbed the stairs with care, my balance compromised by the parcel, cane and bad leg, but I did manage to get there, and knocked on the door that used to belong to my friend.

The door was answered almost immediately, as if its ghostly occupant had been standing just beside the door.

 

Somehow, Raffles looked in that moment how he did in my memories from when we first began our partnership. His suit was fashionable and well pressed. His hair was black, well trimmed and styled. His face was clean shaven, and while the signs of age were there, they looked becoming rather than tiring. Instead, he looked full of vim, and that shine in his eyes was there as I remembered it, exactly the way it was the day he died.

 

He ushered me in. I stared at him, unable to speak.

 

Honouring my silence for the moment, he walked over and poured me a few fingers of scotch, and a smaller measure for himself, and brought them back. I swallowed it down without blinking, letting go of my cane in the process.

 

“Bunny -” he began, softly, so as not to startle me.

I looked around. “Am I dead?” I whispered. There was nothing else I could think of saying. It was suddenly the most important question I needed to ask.

Raffles laughed, and it was still the most glorious sound I had ever heard. “No Bunny. You and I are very much among the living.”

I was shaking so hard that the cup was rattling inside the tin crooked under my arm. He took it from my hands and placed it on the side table.

“My wedding -” I began, and immediately sagged. Raffles came to me and took me, his hands in the grooves of my elbows.

“Bunny”, he whispered. We were close. I could feel the outline of the sixpence in my shoe and the heat of his body through my clothes.

Our eyes met, and the words the vicar had gone over with me the night before echoed through my ears. I knew in my heart that the pain I had felt was because I had not just lost a friend. I had been widowed. For who had I loved more than Raffles? I had fulfilled all the conditions of the marriage contract in the years we were together. I had loved him, comforted him, honoured him with my every act, protected him when no one else could, and forsook all others but him. I did so for as long as he lived, and for longer still after that.

  
I met his eyes and solemnly spoke my vow, the one I had been living by for all those years, aloud for the first time. In reply he kissed me, and I knew, in the way I knew that the sky was blue beneath clouds and that summer would follow the spring, that he was pledging his will with every touch.

**Author's Note:**

> A very belated wedding present for Cambusmore. Have an incredible married life my dear!
> 
>  
> 
> [cicaklah.tumblr.com](http://cicaklah.tumblr.com)


End file.
